Tuesday, January 23, 2007

New Digital Techniques in Landscape and Macro Photography - George Lepp

I have found that any time George Lepp is presenting, one should make the effort to attend. Not only is he a skilled and talented photographer, he is an expert in the newest, latest, and greatest technology for photographers. To check and see if he is presenting near you, his website has a calendar of upcoming events. Well worth your time and money to go. He also has a column in the Outdoor Photographer Magazine.

I had gone to his presentation at Photo Expo a year or so ago. While there were some repeated information, several of the programs had updates. Plus he went over Adobe's Lightroom. I had downloaded Lightroom early, but after hearing his presentation, I'm going to get the newest version. He uses Lightroom to do his initial sort of his images. You can add metadata to all your photos in Lightroom - in fact you can set it up so that your copyright information is automatically entered in every photo you import to Lightroom. I would certainly use that feature.

While the new Photoshop CS3 may have a better photo stitch for Panorama's, Arcsoft Panorama Maker 4 has features my version lacks. I liked the ease with which Panorama Maker stitches photos. So I'm hoping the new version I've bought takes care of some issues that I was having difficulties with. I'll let you know when I have time to play with it. In terms of taking photos to stitch - level the tripod, level the camera, set a manual white balance (so it won't shift between shots) and manual aperture.

He also gave a demonstration on how to use photoshop to do HDR - I'm going to have to play with that one. This one is probably worth hearing the tape

Another set of software worth checking out is Helicon Filter. Now available for both Mac and Windows, this program allows you to take a sequence of photos of a macro subject using different focus and then combines them to give you a photo that is completely sharp through all the depths of field. There is a demonstration on the website. The pro version has a few extra features that will probably be worth it to me.

I love the demonstration of time lapse photography. You need a special cable release to enable you to take one shot every 10 seconds. Apparently you shoot this in the smallest jpg, and you need to have your camera plugged into a reliable power source. You put it together in Quick Time. I don't have the equipment to do it . . . but it sure looks like it would be fun!

And last, he talked about ways to do Infrared photography. I have not started trying to do that. I'm not ready to permanently alter a camera. But apparently there are filters you can buy that allow you to use your regular camera to do infrared. His infrared photos were stunning.

This breakout session was definitely worth my time.

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